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Duck Pie

A savory pie filled with boiled duck and a herbaceous gravy, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Duck Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the duck

  1. Boil the duck for about 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the neck and wings.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the neck, wings, giblets, herbs, onion, anchovy, mace, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and stew gently for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture and add it to the duck's gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the duck into pieces and arrange it in a pie dish.

  2. Adjust seasoning if needed.

  3. Skim off the fat from the cold gravy and pour it over the duck.

  4. Cover with puff pastry or your preferred crust.

  5. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Duck
Provides the meat and the fat and juices that enrich the gravy.
Butter
Fat that carries the aromatics' flavour and adds richness to the gravy.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals and covers the pie.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth as it softens into the gravy.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury umami that rounds out the gravy without tasting fishy.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat from the cold gravy. Fat left on the gravy can make the filling greasy and cloud its texture. Chilling lets the fat rise and set so it can be lifted off cleanly before the gravy is poured over the duck.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, anchovy, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, anchovy, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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